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Hi
Im a Dad, Joe, 34 from Peterborough. I am married and currently have 3 daughters aged 13,7 who live with me but from my previous relationship and a new little girl in my new relationship who is 3 weeks. I also have 1 step daughter who is 6. They all live with me and my wife and I have a 16 year old son who now lives with my ex partner.
I have a residence order for all 3 of my children from the pre ious relationship and a occupation order for the jointly owned property.
I have had a CSA claim against my ex-partner since november 2012 a montth after the 3 children came to live with me and my girlfriend at the time but my ex didnt pay and they ended up, after a year, deducting 160 a month from her wages which includes a payment towards the arrears she built up.
In Feb last year my son, the eldest of my children ran away to his grandmother because he was not behaving at school and didnt like it when I backed up the school and cornered him about his behaviour. He was 14 and had been abusive to me and my other children. It turned out that his mother was encouraging his behaviour. We decided that he should not come back here and he went to live with his mother at the other side of town.
Then in May last year my expartner started a CMS claim against me. The CMS contacted and I gave them all relevant details which included that mine and my expartners 2 daughters lived with me and my wife and my stepdaughter. The CMS did not take my two daughters in to account and calculated I should pay 328 a month. It took them about 4 months to do that calculation. I protested this amount because it should have only been around 160 a month as told by them when they gave me an estimation. I was told in various calls not to pay it and that the case was being sent back to the original team for the calculation to be done.
After various attempts to resolve the situation the cms have no completed their calculation and tell me I should pay 550 a month. Thats 195 regular payment including fees and the rest is arrears accrued since May. I was told not to pay anything and now im suddenly expected to pay this. My case worked completly refuses to acknowledge all previous calls. Not only that but they are saying because I havent paid anything that I cannot use direct pay for atleast 6 months of successful payment. I havent done anything wrong and if anyone has a problem paying maintenance its my expartner.
The CMS completely refuse to link my case with CSA case againat my ex or to transfer it on to the same system. My expartner has confirmed to me that the only reason she wants to use CMS is because likes that I have to pay fees and likes making my life difficult. I feel if she was faced paying the same fees shw would be forced to agree with me that we should have cancelled the claims as the children do not benefit. I get 160 from her but give it straight back through CMS and the children lose because I have to pay fees for the privelege. This doesnt make sense to me and now after CMS consistent lack of competence I am in about 1100 of arrears.
It turns out my ex thought that the cms take my wifes income in to account too and i think she saw pound signs.
I am also left to pay 16000 joint debts which she refuses to pay for the last 4 years and the 2400 mortgage arrears that she had been ordered to pay and didnt before vacating.
My son keeps threatening me with violence in messages even though I have always done my best by him and now I feel I have lost him for good. She has successfully turned him against me which I think wasxpartly helped by his rebellious stage. I wish he didnt run away.
Mortgage:
We lived together until jan 2011 and paid the first 4 years instalments without fail. I moved out and carried on paying towards the mortgage for 8 months. My ex found out about my girlfriend who is nkw my wife and completely refused to accept and money from me and wanted to use CSA. She didnt want it to look like I was paying anything towards the mortgage and she even told me that. Then when I won the property back and moved back in I found she had not long been through respossession proceedings without telling me and that this 50 a month plan to clear the 2k arrears was set up. The mortgage company had not told me about any of this so I was shocked. I then discovered she had not kept up with the payment plan and If I didnt borrow 450 to pay the mortgage eviction would take place. That was notcgood considering my wife and I had given our notice on our accomodation and had paid the final rents so had no money.
I feel and am sure I can prove she was intentionally trying to get the house repossesssed. She had just had a new child and was confident she could be rehomed by the council and if I had made the childrwn homeless the courts might take bsck their previous decisions and give her the children back. A big player behind her devious plan was her new partner who she now has a 2 year restraining order against for beating her up.
My son is now 16 and working towards his grades but apparently not long after leaving my house he was dismissed from his main school and has to attend a different building.
Its all a bit jeremy kyle and I have other issues but can anyone offer any advice to me on this please?
Ideally I dont want to be involved with her financially and want to be able to move on. But she is making it very difficult.
I'm not sure why you were told not to pay it at any point - they should not be giving that advice knowing arrears are building up.
The situation as far as calculations are concerned are that you should be paying her 12% of your gross income to your ex for maintenance for one child (under CMS) and she will have to pay you 20% of net income for 2 children (under CSA). The charges are CMS only, and unfortunately, because you have arrears, are an additional 20% of the maintenance (so effectively meaning you pay 14.4% of gross), though you ex will also be charged 7% of the amount due. Of course you will stop paying her first as your son will end education/reach age 20 before the other children, though you will continue to pay if there are arrears, until they are cleared.
You can ask for a variation on the payments because of the debts, and personally, I would consider whether to sue her in the small claims court for the debts she has built up that you have had to pay - if you were to win there (I don't know what the small claims courts attitudes are to domestic debts), then you might be able to recover the money from the maintenance arrears - I'm not sure how that would work, but possibly the court might help with that.
FInally, because of the way the CSA/CMS have behaved, I would consider asking your MP to raise a complaint with them - at the very least, you want to try to get onto direct pay, so that you aren't paying the 20% charge.
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